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Comment by the__alchemist | Hacker News Reader

From observation, "brick" has evolved, as things do in language. In practice, it rarely means the traditional definition you refer to, but the softer one used here.

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And for that reason I wouldn't hassle laymen over it but among the HN crowd I expect a bit more care. An "anything goes" attitude makes communication more difficult.

"Soft brick" is the correct term that already exists.

> "Soft brick" is the correct term that already exists.

Which is the term that the article uses.

"The result is a device that’s soft-bricked, requiring a device erase and restore from backup."

> Which is the term that the article uses.

...except in the headline.

Need to get you to click on it :-)

Also, although HN readers probably have many devices in their homes there are people out there who have only a phone and no computer. For them this would be pretty catastrophic. Hopefully they’d take their device to Apple or a third party technician

I'm quite convinced apple would just sell them a new one.

Almost like a "soft"-brick, if you would.

You could say the device was pillowed. :D Although given the typical behaviour of old phone batteries, I guess that’s a little ambiguous.

Thus, perhaps "loafed" as in something brick-like, but which may also be soft. And a "loafed" device, being idle, would be loafing.

A soft brick would be a brick before being fired in an oven, no?

So maybe the term shouldn't be 'soft brick' but rather 'muddied'.

"That updated muddied my device, I had to clean it up with a restore"

I appreciate the sentiment but I don't see that catching on. I think a variant of bricked makes sense as it basically means you can't use the device until you can figure out how to fix it. Which the "muddied" analogy doesn't really fit - it's usually possible to use muddy things if not necessarily pleasant.

"fix it" was the definition of the the old usage of brick though, with the "fix it" generally meant a hardware fix, like replaced components. if the fix is reinstalling software, then that means it's still a completely functional piece of hardware. there's nothing wrong with it. you don't say your car is broken because someone who can't drive sits in the driver seat! get off my lawn!

I remember this being referred to as "the OS needs to be reinstalled", a trivial thing that nobody bothered to give a name to, because it was frequent and non-consequential.

Ah yes, the Goebbels effect, also known as "A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth."

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